The best part of my job is that I get to spend a lot of time talking with MSPs.
I get to chat not just about tech stacks and products, but about how businesses are running day to day: the good, the bad and the ugly. I see a wide range of MSPs — different sizes, different verticals, different levels of maturity. Lately, I’ve noticed something interesting.
Even MSPs who are doing “everything right” are starting to ask new questions, especially around their backup, continuity and disaster recovery offerings.
Not because their current backup tech stack stopped working, but because the world around backup has changed.
Instead of hearing: “Which backup platform should we standardize on?”
I’m hearing things like:
“Are we too dependent on one vendor?”
“What happens if our primary platform changes direction?”
“Can we confidently answer our clients’ compliance questions?”
“Do we actually have options if something goes sideways?”
Those are healthy questions. And they’re coming up more often for a reason.
1. Vendor consolidation brought simplicity and trade–offs
Vendor consolidation has reshaped the MSP landscape. Larger platforms, broader portfolios, tighter integrations. On the surface, that feels like progress.
And in many ways, it is. But I’ve also seen the other side of that coin.
An MSP standardized across a single ecosystem — backup, RMM, PSA, security. When that platform has an outage or an issue, the MSP isn’t just troubleshooting backups. Monitoring can slow down. Ticket workflows can be impacted, and overall visibility decreases.
No one did anything “wrong”, there just weren’t any alternatives.
That’s what people mean when they talk about concentration risk, and it’s why frameworks like NIST CSF 2.0 and SOC 2 are putting more emphasis on third-party and supply-chain risk.
Savvy MSPs are looking at multi-vendor marketplace models, like the Sherweb approach of partnering with vetted providers. This enables MSPs to distribute risk across best-of-breed solutions while maintaining architectural consistency through a single orchestrator. This approach reduces dependency on any single vendor’s financial health, product roadmap or post-acquisition integration challenges.
2. Contract flexibility and economic agility matter more than ever
Another theme that comes up a lot is contracts and commercial agreements. I am hearing a lot from folks looking for flexibility over unit pricing.
Many MSPs only realize how locked in they are when they try to make a change. It could stem from a client’s compliance requirements, a recovery need shift or a workload that no longer fits the original design.
I’ve been in conversations where an MSP knows a tool no longer fits a client’s compliance or recovery needs — but switching would mean:
- Waiting out a multi‑year term
- Absorbing minimum commitments
- Migrating data under pressure
Contract flexibility is a part of cyber resilience, not just finance and commerce. The ability to adapt without penalties is becoming just as important as the tools themselves. Look for backup and continuity solutions with month-to-month or annual renewal terms that enable MSPs to optimize their tool stack in real time, align costs with active usage and maintain negotiating leverage.
3. Cyber resilience maturity: Move beyond backup to recovery-first architecture
Thanks to the change in the threat landscape over the last decade, nobody I talk to is pretending that ransomware isn’t real or that recovery is optional. What is changing is how backup is evaluated.
Backup used to be about storage. Now that’s changed to cyber resilience.
The shift from “backup” to cyber resilience reflects maturity in how MSPs and their clients approach recovery and business continuity. Immutability, air-gapping and validated recoverability are now the conversation leaders, and this is no surprise.
A scenario I hear often:
An MSP had backups. They restored successfully. But the restore brought more problems. That’s not technically a backup failure — that’s a recovery design challenge.
What seems to work best is acknowledging that not all workloads are the same:
- SaaS data behaves differently than servers
- Cloud workloads recover differently than endpoints
- Identity recovery has its own risks entirely
Matching the right recovery approach to each workload isn’t overcomplicating things. It’s simply meeting reality where it is. MSPs need to architect diverse resilience strategies rather than relying on a single appliance-based vendor whose recovery stack may not support modern threat scenarios.
4. AI and data governance are everyday conversations
AI is already part of the tools we use, and that’s not slowing down. What is slowing MSPs down is governance. I often hear:
- Where is the data stored, and where is it transited through?
- Who has access to it?
- Can we clearly explain this to an auditor or client?
- Are we comfortable with how AI is being used behind the scenes?
For MSPs supporting regulated industries — defense, manufacturing, healthcare, finance — these aren’t theoretical concerns. SOC 2 and ITAR don’t leave much room for ambiguity.
During compliance reviews, MSPs are the ones being asked to document data residency and access controls for backups. Vendor responses are often unclear; this leads to the MSP being the one left explaining the gap.
This is where choice and transparency really help. Being able to align different vendors to different governance and sovereignty requirements makes those conversations much easier and much more confident.
Final thoughts
Modern MSPs face a convergence of pressures: accelerating threats, stricter compliance mandates, AI governance complexity and clients demanding both resilience and flexibility. Legacy, single vendor backup strategies, especially those tied to post-acquisition integration cycles and inflexible pricing, are no longer working. This creates single points of failure, limited agility and increased overall risk.
Sherweb’s marketplace model, anchored by vetted partners like Acronis, Commvault, Afi, Keepit and more, offers MSPs a different way: the operational simplicity of a unified relationship (single billing, centralized support, shared enablement) combined with the resilience benefits of a diversified, best-of-breed architecture.
I will leave this blog with 5 actionable next steps for MSPs to consider:
- Audit your vendor concentration risk: How dependent are you on a single platform provider’s pricing, roadmap and stability?
- Evaluate your contract flexibility: Can you scale down, pivot or exit without punitive costs?
- Test your cyber resilience maturity: Are backups immutable, tested and specific to the workload?
- Map your compliance posture: Do your backup solutions support SOC 2, ITAR or emerging AI governance requirements through NIST AI RMF?
- Consider marketplace optionality: Does your vendor strategy let you architect for client fit, or are you locked into a one-size-fits-all?
Want to compare notes with other MSPs?
If you’re rethinking your backup and resilience strategy, you don’t have to figure it out alone. Conversations like these are what the CyberMSP Community is built for. Join to connect with other MSPs and stay ahead of what’s coming.
